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Wildhorse Super
Leads the Country
By Paul Ramsdell, PNGA Media
At first glance, it might seem a bit out of place for a superintendent
from a golf course just outside of Pendleton, Ore., to be at a small
dinner honoring Tiger Woods, or having the run of the clubhouse of
Augusta National during the Masters.
Sean Hoolehan, however, is right in the middle of those situations,
albeit wide-eyed at times.
“That was a tremendous feeling of ‘Wow,’”
he said about realizing last April that he was networking with the
leaders of the golf community on the veranda at Augusta National.
Hoolehan, the superintendent at Wildhorse Resort outside Pendleton,
fits right in because he is one of the leaders of the golf community,
having been elected as the 70th president of the Golf Course Superintendents
Association of America last February.
“Part of the process is being able to share our members’
concerns,” he said about networking at the major championships
and major events of golf throughout the entire world. Whether it’s
the British Open, or a small gathering to honor Tiger Woods, Hoolehan
is center stage.
“All of these things help you click in
how real this is, and how important it is,” Hoolehan said.
“The president is essentially the face of the association for
a year,” said Todd Lupkes, a friend of Hoolehan’s and
the superintendent at Gig Harbor (Wash.) Golf Club.
“If you look at how the image of the superintendent has gone
the last 15 years, we were never invited to those events before,”
said Lupkes, a past president of the Western Washington chapter of
the GCSAA. “Well, now it’s almost mandatory that we attend
them, and that says a lot for the association and the direction it’s
headed.”
For the next year, the association is under the direction of Hoolehan,
a 49-year-old who has been at Wildhorse for the past 10 years. He
was born in Chicago, received a turfgrass certificate from Rutgers
and worked at two different courses in Hawaii before taking the Wildhorse
position.
His background and his personality make him a perfect fit for the
role of GCSAA president, Lupkes said.
“Sean is a man for the country. He’s concerned about everybody’s
welfare. If Western Washington has an issue, he’ll be there
to help. He comes out and speaks at our engagements, but would fly
to Florida in a heartbeat if something came up down there and was
needed.”
Being president of the CGSAA is not just networking and glad-handing.
There are serious issues for the members, and therefore golf as a
whole.
“Our members voluntarily voted in a standard of what a Class
A golf course superintendent is, and those standards now are really
coming into play,” said Hoolehan, who started playing golf at
age 10, and started working on a golf course at 13.
“That’s been a big step for the association, and something
we’ve really been focused on for the last four or five years
and now it is really coming into play.”
There’s another concern of the GCSAA that particularly interests
Hoolehan.
“We need to increase minority participation in golf, and increase
the minority membership of our association,” he said.
“That is something, being that I’m employed by the Confederated
Tribes of Umatilla, Cayuse and Walla Walla, I feel it’s something
that golf is really lacking. We talked about increasing play and really
taking care of the game, growing the game in the minority community
is a slam dunk. It should be an easy sell and should be something
we’re focusing on.”
To be able to tackle these issues, Hoolehan needed support from Wildhorse.
Not many golf courses would want to handle the cost and inconvenience
of having a superintendent on the road 100 days a year.
“Wildhorse
has been an active participant in my service on the board from the
very start,” he said.
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